Managed Services: 7 Blogs MSPmentor Didn’t Write, April 12

Event season has kicked into overdrive. I spent this week at Ingram Micro Cloud Summit and Tech Data Channel Link, before making a quick stop at ConnectWise‘s headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Next up is the OpenStack Summit. In between all that travel, here are seven managed services provider (MSP) blogs and news stories the MSPmentor team didn’t have time to write for the week ending April 12, 2013. Bonus: Actually, this week’s list is much longer because there’s so much happening in the industry right now.

14. Two New Moves: Continuum Managed Services confirmed a deeper relationship with CMIT Solutions — a move that was hardly surprising considering how impressed the CMIT team has been with Continuum for at least the past year. Separately, Continuum has launched new services to help MSPs with their marketing and sales initiatives. We’ll offer more details and analysis soon.

13. Two Introductions: Carrie Simpson at The Eureka Project is focused on a telemarketing service for MSPs. I look forward to Eureka updates in the months ahead. Meanwhile, David Brimley is best-known for his work as managing VP of sales for PhoenixNap. But keep an eye on Brimley’s HIPAA expertise — especially when it comes to small health care providers in the Phoenix area… Side note: Thank you to Stuart Selbst for both introductions.

12. Company Watch, Part I: Keep an eye on IndependenceIT, which offers MSPs hosted desktop services.

11. Three CEOs, One Mission: Here’s a two-part riddle.

• First, why did ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini, LabTech Software CEO Matt Nachtrab and Quosal CEO Kent McNall meet in Tampa, Fla.,  yesterday afternoon at 5:15 p.m. ET?
• Second, how the heck did McNall make it home in time for dinner — in Seattle?

MSPmentor has the answer, but we need some time to organize our thoughts before writing up this blog.

10. Company Watch, Part II: Keep an eye on masterIT.

9. Losing the Battle, Winning the War: What if overall PC sales continue to drop but Microsoft’s own revenues ultimately surge (over the next few years) because of Surface Pro? Call me crazy but I think that scenario is possible.

8. Beyond Hosted Exchange: At both Ingram Micro Cloud Summit and Tech Data Channel Link, I heard from VARs that are introducing cloud services. But many of the moves involved hosted Exchange — not exactly a bleeding edge market opportunity. At least it’s a start.

7. Return of A Sharp MSP: Former White Glove Technologies CEO Tommy Wald surfaced at the Ingram Cloud Summit. It sounds like Wald is working behind the scenes on a few projects… including some angel investments. Wald exited White Glove when mindSHIFT (owned by Best Buy) acquired the company. Sharp guy. And he’s back in the game — in a range of new roles.

6. Even Bigger Numbers: I reported recently that Veeam, the virtualization backup company, is signing up 1,000 customers per month. Veeam has since clarified and updated the figure. The new estimate: 2,500 per month. Oh my. Now you know why I keep telling readers that the backup and disaster recovery market increasingly involves public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and more. Veaam’s platform has cloud connectors to those platforms.

5. Cloud Event Worth Watching: I’m heading to the OpenStack Summit on Monday. I’ve received a record number of meeting requests ahead of the event, which points to the fact that OpenStack cloud providers are desperate to reach channel partners. You’ll see live coverage throughout the week on Talkin’ Cloud.

4. Company Watch, Part III: Keep an eye on N-able Technologies.

3. Big Hire: If you know anything about the remote control market and the cloud file sharing market, then I think you’ll be impressed with some of the career developments in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned.

2. Hardware as a Service: CharTec is likely the best-known provider of HaaS. But here comes Ingram Micro, which is introducing a HaaS program involving Lenovo and HP hardware. The twist: With Ingram’s program, I believe channel partners (MSPs, VARs) will hold the debt. In CharTec’s case, I think CharTec (rather than the MSPs and VARs) holds the debt.

1. Care to Meet?: If you’re at the OpenStack conference and want to meet feel free to post a comment or send me email, Joe.Panettieri [at] Penton.com.

Thanks for reading MSPmentor. We appreciate the comments, feedback, tips, guidance — and even the criticism.